2015: My year in books

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

As 2015 comes to an end, it’s time to take a look back at the year’s greatest hits in books! Earlier this week, I did a round-up of my favorite graphic novels and audiobooks from 2015. Today, I’m widening the focus to include the year’s reading as a whole. Here’s a summary of what I read, and what really stood out for me during a year of some truly excellent reading.

[Note: Click on the links to see my reviews if you’re interested!]

Goodreads stats as of 12/30/2015:

Total number of books read: 148
Total number of pages read: 46,616
Star rating used most often: 5 stars (57 total)
Star rating used least often: 2 stars (8 total — and I didn’t give any books only 1-star. I think if I thought that little of a book, I just DNFd.)

Longest book read: A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon, 1439 pages (a re-read)
Shortest book read (excluding graphic novels and novellas):
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, 120 pages

Bests & Other Stuff of Note

Best children’s (middle grade): The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton’s Lair by S. S. Taylor and Katherine Roy
Best young adult: The Cure For Dreaming by Cat Winters
Best contemporary: Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Best graphic novel: Alex + Ada (trilogy) by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Best fantasy: Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Best historical fiction: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
Best domestic drama: Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genova

Best new volume in an ongoing series: I’m always thrilled when Patricia Briggs releases a new book. In 2015, it was Dead Heat, the 4th volume in the Alpha & Omega series (which stars one of my favorite supernatural couples, Charles and Anna).

Best start of a new series: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher

Best end to a great series: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Best in the “late to the party” category: Years after the first books were released, I started two terrific ongoing mystery series: The Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow and the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear.

Best return of old friends: Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore, the sequel to A Dirty Job, which brings back all sorts of favorite characters, including Minty Fresh, Charlie Asher, and the squirrel people.

Best use of illustration to tell a story: The Marvels by Brian Selznick is a gorgeous book to look at, using pictures as part of the plot, rather than just as decoration. Runner-up: I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest, which mixes comics with text to create a thrillingly tense novel.

Author of the year: Jane Austen! I revisited the works of Austen this year by listening to the audiobooks of her six main novels. I also read three Austen Project retellings, watched the BBC version of Northanger Abbey, and even saw a musical production of Emma!

Best classic read: I loved reading North and South with my book group, and watching the mini-series was the cherry on the sundae!

Around the world in a book: My reading took me to some amazing places this year…

Ethiopia: Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein
New Guinea: Euphoria by Lily King
Portugal: The Day of Atonement by David Liss
Australia: Silver Bay by Jojo Moyes
Luxembourg: The Expats by Chris Pavone
Canada: Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder
Italy: A Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian
India: Prudence by Gail Carriger
UK: After You by Jojo Moyes (and plenty of other books too!)
France: A Little in Love by Susan Fletcher

Journeys through time: I traveled to many different eras via terrific books; most notably…

Colonial America: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Antebellum South: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
World War I: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear; The Uninvited by Cat Winters
World War II: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
1950s: In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

Best speculative/science fiction: The sci-fi works I enjoyed most were:

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Oh, the horror! The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy was truly icky, but I just couldn’t look away.

Biggest let-down: I loved The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, but I was so disappointed by book #2, The Infinite Sea, which just did not deliver, in my humble opinion.

Best sports books for people who don’t usually read about sports:

Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally (running)
Winger (and its sequel, Stand-Off) by Andrew Smith (rugby)

Best use of a grandmother: I loved the narrator of The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant.

Best return to childhood: I reread The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and loved them both all over again.

Best author event: I had two awesome author experiences this year, hearing talks by Neil Gaiman and Felicia Day and then getting my books signed!

Best bookish TV events of 2015:

Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, based on the book by Philip K. Dick:

PBS’s Poldark, based on the books by Winston Graham:

And (because I can’t leave it out of a “best of” list), the 2nd half of the first season of Outlander, after a long six-month Droughtlander!

Most eye-catching covers:

Quirkiest titles:

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Intro to Alien Invasion by Owen King
Twittering From the Circus of the Dead by Joe Hill
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day
Working For Bigfoot by Jim Butcher

Best getting-thrown-for-a-loop: Books with twists or plots that took me by surprise:

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
Winger by Andrew Smith

Bookish delight, all year long:

All the many, many books which, for whatever reason, I can’t quite categorize but still really enjoyed (plus a few that are probably better off forgotten). It’s been a great year of reading. I can’t wait to see what treasures I’ll discover in 2016!

What were your favorite books of 2015? What surprised or excited you the most? Please share your top reads and recommendations in the comments!

19Dec2015

The audiobook debate: What “counts” as reading?

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Earlier this week, a close friend (and one of my favorite book people – a true BBF) was moaning to me about her progress toward her Goodreads goal. Only two weeks left in December, and she’s still short 12 books! She’s planning to take a bunch of smaller books and graphic novels with her on her family holiday trip, so it’s likely she’ll make her total by the end of the year.

I’ve already passed my goal (okay, I did read a lot of graphic novels this year!), and as I was talking to my friend about some of the books that pushed me over the top, numbers-wise, I mentioned Uprooted by Naomi Novik, one of my favorite audiobooks of the year. The conversation took a sudden and unexpected turn:

BBF: You count audiobooks?

Me: Yes. (Of course! I added in my head.)

BBF: But that’s not reading!

Me: Oh yes it is!

BBF: Nuh-uh!

Me: Yuh-huh!

We didn’t stick out our tongues at each other… but in terms of childish behavior, we came close!

So what is reading? What “counts”?

The primary definition of the verb “read”, according to Dictionary.com, is:

to look at carefully so as to understand the meaning of (something written, printed, etc.):
to read a book; to read music.

Okay, that one focuses on the written/printed word. Here’s definition #2:

to utter aloud or render in speech (something written, printed, etc.):
reading a story to his children; The actor read his lines in a booming voice.

Hmm. That’s the act of reading aloud. When my son was younger, I read to him all the time, even up to age 12, when we read together such books as Eragon and The Hobbit. I had never read Eragon before, and as I read it to my son, I was reading it for myself as well.

But back to the original question: Is listening to a book the same as reading a book? Do your eyes have to be involved in order to have read something? What about someone who’s vision-impaired? Using a Braille book seems to obviously be reading… but what if they don’t know Braille? What if they can only enjoy books that they listen to? Does that count as reading?

I’ve become a big fan of audiobooks in the past few years, so my take on the issue is pretty clear-cut. For me, whether I’ve used my eyes or my ears, my brain is certainly involved, and either way, I’m absorbing a story, ideas, plotlines, themes, and more.

I suppose I’d be in favor of a more expansive definition of reading, along the lines of:

Using one’s senses to take in the content of a book.

(Okay, let’s agree to exclude taste and smell from the above! I love the smell of a bookstore, but sniffing books definitely isn’t reading! And I don’t recommend eating them either.)

Of course, as I probably should have said earlier, it doesn’t actually matter what anyone else thinks when it comes to Goodreads stats. I’ve seen people argue about all sorts of things “counting” as real books, such as novellas, graphic novels, and re-reads. I take a pretty lenient approach with myself: If I feel like I’ve read something, then I have! And that includes all of the above.

Yes, in my opinion, if I’ve listened to an audiobook, then I’ve read the book. Period.

Where do you stand on the issue? Are audiobooks books? Does listening “count” as reading? And would you (or do you) include audiobooks in your list of books read in a year?

Share your thoughts, please!

2Dec2015

Counting up the books: December update

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Another month, another opportunity to take stock of my overflowing shelves!

In early September, I wrote a post called Counting Up the Books, talking about two things I love: BOOKS and NUMBERS. That was the beginning of a monthly feature for me, in which I tally up just how many unread books there are in my house and on my Kindle.

My September starting point was 598:

$Book Math 1$

As of October, I’d made some progress after culling and donating a bunch of books, plus making the decision to omit non-fiction books from my total — since, let’s face it, I’m a fiction lover through and through, and I feel no urgency at all about getting to all those non-fiction tomes (as interesting as they may seem) any time soon.

As a result, my past two month totals, adding in new books and subtracting books read or given away, were:

October: 539

November: 548 (yes, that’s an increase…)

And here we are at the beginning of December… and, well, my Black Friday/Cyber Monday/used book store mania is clearly showing. Here’s the latest count, which clearly tells me that I’m heading up and not down:

Just to be clear: I actually read more than five books during the past month! But a lot of those were library books, and while I adore the public library, reading library books doesn’t help get my bookshelves under control.

How are your shelves doing this month?

Don’t forget to join me for Shelf Control on Wednesdays, where we highlight books from our shelves that we really want to read!

28Nov2015

Audiobooks and the almost impossible art of patience

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I need more patience, and I need it now!

Okay, let me back up a bit and provide a little context.

Audiobooks are a big part of my life. Who’d a thunk it?

Until about three years ago or so, I didn’t think audiobooks were for me. I tried one once, couldn’t keep my mind from wandering, and decided I just wasn’t cut out for this audio thing.

But then, I ended up giving audiobooks another try when I felt myself itching for an Outlander re-read, but had so many other books to read that I couldn’t balance my competing reading needs. Audio to the rescue! Listening to Outlander in the car while commuting back and forth to work made my drives so enjoyable, and pretty soon I added audiobooks to my weekend walks as well.

Still, I was convinced that I could only succeed with audio for re-reading books; that if I tried to listen to a book I hadn’t read already, my focus would keep slipping and I’d miss too much of the narrative to enjoy it.

Cue the time machine, and fast-forward to the present!

I’m never without an audiobook now, and while I still find audio a great medium for revisiting books that I read long ago and want to experience all over again, I’ve found that when I want to, I can do just fine with new books too.

Perhaps it’s just an acquired skill that takes practice — like playing tennis or learning to knit? (Sorry, those are totally random examples).

I eased into my new book/audiobook adventures slowly, and discovered that audio is actually perfect for me when it comes to spending time with genres and types of books that I don’t normally make room for. I enjoy non-fiction occasionally, but I’ll always choose a novel over a non-fiction book when I’m looking for a good read — but via audio, I’ve loved a few great non-fiction books in the last couple of years, especially Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat.

I’ve also discovered that while I never seem to have the patience to sit and read a book of short stories, it works just fine for me as an audiobook, probably since I can usually only listen in shorter chunks anyway.

So, here’s where my current problem enters in:

The problem with audiobooks is that you can’t binge-read!

If I fall in love with a book, or get so caught up in the action or the intrigue that I just can’t put it down, then I’ll stay up til all hours of the morning reading in bed, or keep a book open while I eat my breakfast, or read every time I take a little break from my daily routines. I can make a binge happen if I want!

But my audiobook time is really limited, and the amount I can get through in any given listen is directly related to the length of my drive or my walk. Because one thing I simply CAN’T do is listen to an audiobook while sitting still, and if I try to listen while doing odds and ends around my house, my attention is too scattered to truly enjoy it.

Right now, I’m about halfway through with an audiobook that I’m absolutely loving, and today I got up to this incredibly exciting part… and then I came to the end of my walk, which I stretched out as long as I possibly could, and now I can’t continue with the story until tomorrow! And I’m so, so frustrated.

I actually picked up a hard copy of the book from the library in order to check on a couple of names, and so I suppose I could just read ahead… but somehow, it feels like I’d be cheating on my audiobook! Plus, I’ve really gotten into the narrator’s accent (even though it bugged me at first), and when I look at the printed words on the page, it seems flat somehow.

I’ve definitely had a couple of books in the past that I started via audio, and then realized that I wanted to go faster than the narration, so I switched over to hard copies (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Cinder by Marissa Meyer are two that come to mind).

With my current back, I’m trying to take deep breaths and let go of my urgent need to find out what happens next. So what if it takes a few more days than I’d like? So what if, once I go back to work on Monday, I’ll have even less time to listen each day? Will I enjoy the book less if I can’t finish it all at once? Does a book need to be consumed as quickly as possible in order to satisfy?

Patience. I need patience. Maybe I need a patience mentor…

Nope, I will not give into the dark side. I will not read ahead. I’ll stick it out, and enjoy every half-hour or hour of listening time that I have.

And when all else fails, I can always listen at 1.25x speed.

8Nov2015

Reading habits: Serial monogamy or open relationships?

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I’ve been unfaithful.

Oh, the shame.

I’m usually a serial monogamist when it comes to my reading habits. Give me a book and time to read it, and I won’t look up until I’m done. Hand me another while I’m still reading the first, and straight to the book pile it goes.

I know plenty of readers who need a few books going at any given time, but that’s not me. I like the immersive experience of diving into a fictional world, hanging out with the characters, and devoting all my love to my one and only. Trying to maintain more than one relationship just doesn’t work for me.

And yet…

Yesterday, I cheated. I’m two-timing, and now I’m torn between two relationships. They each want my time and attention. There’s something so attractive about each. They fill different needs in my life, and they both make me feel good. Don’t make me choose!

Hee. Melodramatic much?

The mundane background is this: Yesterday, I had to drive my son to what was supposed to be an all-day event taking place in a town about an hour’s drive from home. The plan was that I’d drop him off at 10 in the morning, and pick him up at 10 pm. All good so far. About 15 minutes after leaving home, the kiddo expressed doubt. Normally, I’d tell him to suck it up and live up to his commitments… but he struck where it hurt: If he stayed for the entire event, he wouldn’t have enough time to do a good job on a school assignment. Wow, sneaky. I agreed to pick him up after the first part of the event, at which point it wouldn’t make sense for me to drive home and then go back, so it was off in search of a Starbucks I went to while away a few hours.

Problem? No book.

I was mid-way through a sci-fi/detective story that I was really enjoying, but anticipating just driving there and back, I didn’t have the book with me. Silly me. I normally NEVER leave the house without a book. What was I thinking?

Stuck in a coffee shop with hours to kill, I simply had no choice. I opened up the Kindle app on my phone and started a new book, an ARC I’d received for a romantic story by an author whose works I’d enjoyed previously.

And it was good.

I read about 35% while waiting to get back on mom duty. And then I had a dilemma: Keep going with the new book, which I was into at this point, or go back to the original book I’d been reading?

Either way, my heart and mind will only be halfway devoted to the book I’m with. I may be reading one, but I’ll be wondering about the other. Am I doing the right thing? What if the other one isn’t as good when I go back to it? What if it pales by comparison — but if I’d never strayed, I might have been perfectly satisfied? How can I be happy with just one when I know there’s another one out there that I feel drawn to?

Oh, the torment of a cheater’s heart!

I’m sure I’ll get through it, but I have to ask: What’s your relationship style with the books in your life?

Are you a serial monogamist — one book at a time, no room for another, until you’ve gotten all the way to the end and you’re ready for something new?

Or do you prefer an open relationship — why limit yourself to just one when there are so many options? Do you read several books at once, going from one to another as the mood strikes?

Right now, as I debate which of my two books to continue with today, I’m thinking that I’m not cut out for the two-timing lifestyle. Once I finish one (or the other), it’ll be back to monogamy for me!

1Nov2015

Counting up the books: November update

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Another month, another opportunity to take stock of my overflowing shelves!

In early September, I wrote a post called Counting Up the Books, in which I combined two things I love: BOOKS and NUMBERS.

I tallied up just how many unread books there are in my house, which gave me a rather scary number. My September book count looked like this:

$Book Math 1$

As of October, I’d made a smidge of progress, thanks in large part to culling and donating… and also, making the executive decision to leave the non-fiction books out of the count. Because, let’s face it, those non-fiction books are probably permanent fixtures on my shelves — nice to have, and maybe I’ll read them eventually, but for now — give me fiction! Here’s where I stood as of the beginning of October:

And here we are in November! I mostly added (shame on me!), but that’s okay. I had a busy month with not a lot of time to read, and I solemnly swear that I absolutely intend to read all of my new acquisitions!

Sigh. I added more than I subtracted… but I guess that’s the life of a book lover! Still, I’m excited to be focusing a bit more on my shelves, and I love that I’m finally getting to books that I’ve owned for a good long time already.

How are your shelves doing this month?

Don’t forget to join me for Shelf Control on Wednesdays, where we highlight books from our shelves that we really want to read!

31Oct2015

Thumbs Down: Generic Book Titles

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Someone recently asked me what I was reading, and I was completely stuck for an answer. Not because I wasn’t reading anything at all, or because I wasn’t enjoying the book… I just couldn’t get the name right.

Title… title… I know I know it… argh…

There seems to be a plague of generic, repetitive-sounding book titles right now. Just looking back at my own books from my Goodreads shelves, I see:

What You Left Behind
The Girl You Left Behind
Those Left Behind
The Secrets We Left Behind
The Secrets We Keep

Plus a bunch about meeting, leaving, separating, missing…

When You Were Here
After I’m Gone
Before I Met You
Far From You
Until We Meet Again
Since You’ve Been Gone
The Last Time They Met
The Day We Met
The Next Time You See Me

To tell the truth, there’s:

The Truth About Us
All the Truth That’s In Me
The Truth About You and Me

More repetitions, patterns, and just general general-ness:

The Moment of Everything
The Theory of Everything
Maybe in Another Life
The Opposite of Maybe
Then and Always
The Here and Now

It’s not that these aren’t good books. Most are! But so many books have these bland, could-mean-anything titles — so when I look back at a list of book that I’ve read, I have a really hard time connecting these generic titles to a particular plot. Which is a shame, because in a real-life conversation without Google or Goodreads right in front of me, I’m stuck saying things like “that book I read about the boy with the dead parent” or “the one about the twin sisters” or some other unhelpful nonsense.

Do you have any book titles that you constantly mix up? Have you come across books with switchable, forgettable titles? Please tell me I’m not the only one who gets tripped up by interchangeable titles!

So. Much. Confusion.

8Oct2015

BabyLit: Classics for Kids!

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

All together now: Awwwwwwww. Are these the cutest things or what?

Author Jennifer Adams and artist Alison Oliver have created the most adorable board books, sure to please every bookworm of a parent who’s just dying to share their love of literature with their little ones.

These two are the newest in their BabyLit series, and they’re totally precious. We have “Little Miss Austen” with Emma, teaching toddlers all about emotions with pages such as these:

Also featured are Emma being excited, Miss Taylor happy, and a very angry and red-faced Mr. Elton.

In the pirate world, we learn about shapes with “Little Master Louis Stevenson” and Treasure Island, with pictures of the Admiral Benbow inn, a treasure chest, Long John Silver, and a parrot, along with:

Have I used the words “adorable”, “cute”, and “precious” already? I’m running out of ways to say it. These board books are bright and colorful and are sure to catch the eyes of babies and toddlers… and meanwhile, bookloving adults can chuckle and appreciate that even if they’re too busy with diapers and bottles to sit and read, at least they can get a little flavor of the classics with the BabyLit books.

These are only two of the ADORABLE (yup, still using that word) books in the collection. Check out the BabyLit website for much, much more. Because all toddlers with taste need Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet in board book form.

One more time: Awwwwwwww.

1Oct2015

Counting up the books: October update

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

In early September, I wrote a post called Counting Up the Books, in which I combined two things I love: BOOKS and NUMBERS.

I tallied up just how many unread books there are in my house, which gave me a rather scary number. My September book count looked like this:

$Book Math 1$

After that, I decided to do a Book Count including just the unread physical fiction books and graphic novels in my house, changing the outcome to look like this:

$Book Math 2$

Now that a month has gone by, I’m realizing that I need to stick the Kindle number back into my count. The Kindle books may not take up space on my overcrowded bookshelves, but they’re still there cluttering up my virtual shelves… besides which, they’re all books that I wanted to read in the first place, so I should really get to them.

Let’s do the math for October, adding in new acquisitions (yes, dammit, I’m still buying books!) and subtracting books that I’ve donated or otherwise given away or traded in.

So there you have it! Yes, I did read some books from my shelves during the past month, but I also kept adding books to the collection, so my numbers didn’t really go down in any significant way.

But I’ll keep moving forward!

How are your shelves doing this month?

Don’t forget to join me for Shelf Control on Wednesdays, where we highlight books from our shelves that we really want to read!

8Sep2015

Coming soon… Shelf Control!

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Thank you to one and all who voted in my poll over the weekend to help me choose a title for my new weekly feature here at Bookshelf Fantasies.

Drumroll, please…

We have a name!

I’m excited to introduce you to…

Up to now, my Wednesday posts (Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday) — inspired by Waiting on Wednesday and Wishlist Wednesday — have been focused on upcoming new releases, highlighting not-yet-published books that I want to read. And while I’ll never run out of those, I’m realizing more and more that I need to regroup and focus on the books I already have. (Want to know more? Check out my recent post, Counting up the books).

With that in mind, I’m bouncing with joy as I introduce Shelf Control. My Shelf Control feature will run each Wednesday (starting next week) — and much like my Wishing & Waiting posts, will focus on a book that I really want to read. But with a catch!

What’s the catch? Quite simple. My Shelf Control picks will be books that I already own — either physical copies from my overflowing shelves, or one of the many unread titles elbowing each other out of the way on my Kindle.

I was originally thinking of this as something I’d do myself each week, but based on some comments received, it sounds like there might be interest out there for others to join in! So, I’ll be adding in a linky tool, and would love to share the love!

I’m looking forward to highlighting some of the goodies from my shelves… and I’m hoping this will give me the added motivation to start focusing on reading books I already have!

Because some days, when I look at my shelves, I worry that I’ll end up like this:

See you next week for Shelf Control!